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Pulse Center for Patient Safety Education & Advocacy (formerly PULSE of New York) is a grassroots, nonprofit, 501(c)3 organization working to improve patient safety and reduce the rate of medical errors.

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PULSE of NY, a community-based patient safety organization, has announced its partnership with a new consulting group, Healthcare Solutions Connection, to help healthcare organizations improve their patient engagement, safety, and satisfaction.

April 29, 2014 (Newswire.com) -
PULSE of NY, a community-based patient safety organization, has announced that it is joining in partnership with a new consulting group, Healthcare Solutions Connection, to help healthcare organizations improve their patient engagement, safety, and satisfaction.

HSC is headed by health law and policy expert Carrie Nixon. It unites within one organization a variety of experts and boutique consulting firms in healthcare-related disciplines including law, IT, insurance, funding, managed care and operations. Its aim is to assemble dedicated teams of expert consultants who can work together to create coherent solutions.

Healthcare is specialized: clients understand their own domains well, but don't always know what kind of extra expertise they may need, or where to find it. For each challenge facing one of these organizations, HSC can assemble a team of expert consultants who have specialist knowledge and know or can find the answers.

"For example," says Nixon, "I'm a lawyer. One of our clients in the healthcare industry might say, 'We need legal services and help setting up our contracts for our new Medicare Advantage plan.' My firm will do that, but in the course of providing those services, we have a lot of conversations that may reveal that they also need help on the operational front; they need a network analysis to make sure that they'll have all the providers they need in the network. Down the road another question might arise: 'Does our electronic health records system have all the reporting capacity it needs?' While healthcare organizations may hire consultants piecemeal to address these questions, those experts aren't usually collaborating to design an integrated solution; in fact, their recommendations may conflict with each other. HSC offers a more coherent, strategic approach."

PULSE's Contribution

Where does PULSE of NY fit in this picture? Nixon says, "A big part of healthcare reform — especially with respect to accountable care and accountable care organizations — is patient engagement. It's very important that health systems be able to show that they are appropriately engaging patients and are achieving patient satisfaction. That's where PULSE of NY can come in, identifying what the providers need to think about in terms of patient engagement and satisfaction."

PULSE's Ilene Corina comments, "We're very excited to be part of this new and innovative approach to improving patients' experience of the healthcare system. HSC will enable PULSE to extend its mission of improving patient safety and satisfaction to new areas, and at a very strategic level. We look forward to working closely with Carrie and the other HSC consultants to ensure that patient engagement is included as an integral part of more health care institutions."